


Let Me Count the Ways I Love You

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fear, Fluff and Angst, Galaxy Garrison, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Song Lyrics, They are so stupidly in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 04:43:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10506531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: Shiro and Keith count down their last hours before the Kerberos mission, which involves Shiro singing terribly and Keith recognizing all the things he loves.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Let Me Count the Ways I Love You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11214540) by [Perfect_criminal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perfect_criminal/pseuds/Perfect_criminal)



> So this came about because of a thread on twitter involving Armageddon talk and _that_ scene with Leaving On a Jet Plane getting sung terribly off-key. And basically I have no self-control in writing things that strike my heart. Enjoy!

There are a lot of things Keith can think of when it comes to love, more than a handful really, which is a lot considering the world has never really given him much of anything. In fact, the world seems to enjoy taking what it can and watching him scramble to make up for the losses stacked against him. All those years ago, it had put this little fire of resentment in his soul, one that flared brightest with his arrival at the Garrison, fresh and full of fight. 

Not even the so-called _good_ fight. Just that reckless, fuck the world and all its misery sort of fight. 

And one day he had taken a swing, looking to mark someone else just like the world had marked him, and had landed himself in Shiro’s bedroom for the effort. With a lecture steaming hot off Shiro’s lips and the right side of his jaw aching something fierce.

Because Shiro didn’t pull his punches when it mattered. Keith came to learn that in full fairly quickly afterward. 

But he loves that moment because, for the first time in his life, someone had looked at him like he could be more than what the world told him he was worth, which by most people’s estimates hadn’t been very much. A handful of change at best, the scraps of dollars spent and left to linger for some oddball use. But Shiro had gotten angry. No, he had been _pissed_ , and it wasn’t because Keith had split his lip for nothing more than being in the wrong place at the what was inevitably the right time. Shiro had yelled at him for throwing away his potential before he even had a chance to prove its worth. 

For the first time in his life, Keith had thought that maybe there was someone out there who didn’t measure men by their records or their reputations. He just looked at the man. 

And right now, Keith can’t help but look because that’s something else he loves – the way Shiro smiles when he’s satisfied. It’s this lazy, half-formed thing that brims with all the warmth of a heart well-kept. His hair is mussed, bangs run back from his forehead and opening up Shiro’s face for the taking, and his gaze is trailing down the length of Keith’s body like it's a shoreline recently claimed. Flag planted, marks made, his name scrawled across skin in full declaration. When Keith flashes him that knowing smirk, eyebrow cocked and shameless on the call-out, Shiro laughs without remorse. 

Keith loves that sound too. Because Shiro is unapologetic in love. 

Fingertips glide up along his spine, one smooth line up the center of his back that has Keith arching with the memory of pleasures recently taken and given. He presses in closer, finally settles himself down alongside Shiro’s side with head over heart and left arm draping across his chest. Shiro draws in a careful breath, then lets it go without the expected shudder. Soft and easy, the sound of full acceptance. 

“When do you have to leave?”

Shiro clears his throat quietly like the question had been the real unexpected bit in all of this and he had to clear prior thoughts from his tongue before he could offer any semblance of an answer. It whispers of silent trepidation, telling Keith that there are things that can still put fear into Shiro and that some of them have his name on it.

But he loves that too because it tells him he can be cherished. Tells him that beneath the soldier even Shiro could be at the mercy of his heart. 

Keith slides his leg across Shiro’s beneath the sheets, tangling their limbs, then flexes his fingers against Shiro’s chest and waits until the words find weight enough to be spoken.

“Four hours. That should leave me enough time to get back and catch a bit more sleep before our last briefing.”

It doesn’t seem like enough. Maybe it’s never enough, and there are things Keith wants to say to that but he can’t. Or he won’t, because already Shiro is more than enough for him, more than maybe he really deserves. Sometimes he can still hear the world murmuring of how he has yet to prove himself worth anything. And then there’s Shiro, running his fingers across the expanse of his back with this absentminded tenderness that simultaneously plunges the knife right into his heart like he just needs to remind himself he’s actually alive and then sutures up the wound to make sure he doesn’t bleed out the best of him. 

Shiro is the better of him, and Keith loves that bit too. Because it doesn’t diminish who he is, like so much of this world would tell him such things do, but because it lets him know he still has greater heights to reach. That he’s beyond capable of getting there.

He just needs a little more time. 

“All my bags are packed. . . .I’m ready to go. . .”

Keith feels his heart bite down, sending a shockwave of pain throughout his chest. 

“I’m standing here outside your door. . .”

Nestling his chin against the top of Keith’s head, Shiro's voice comes out soft and broken and just out-of-key enough to make the whole thing endearing. But the pain is still ricocheting around his lungs, making it almost impossible to breathe with any semblance of _all right_. Something murmurs for Keith to fight it, that there's nothing worth spilling yourself out for, nothing worth breaking for with every little piece left to glimmer like glass beneath the sun. Something else tells him he's already fallen, and Keith knows that to be hard and true, that there was never anything here to fight against. 

Not even this little pulse of heartache burgeoning in his soul, the one that says tomorrow is going to hurt.

“I hate to wake you up to say goodbye. . .”

Fingertips dig into Shiro’s chest, but it doesn’t stop the song from sailing over his lips, still quietly busted up and beautiful. All it does is lure Shiro’s hand from the edge of the mattress over to where Keith has his fingers planted into skin. One by one, Shiro plucks them free, a digit for every following word.

“But the dawn is breakin’. . .”

One by one, he slinks his fingers in between Keith’s.

“You can’t sing at all.” 

His words come out with laughter. Only the mirth woven into the sound isn’t bright like gold, rather it’s storm-cloud silver, heavy with the promise of rain. The words meant to follow that up clot within his throat; Keith forces it all out with another laugh, hating the way it cuts jagged over his lips. 

Above him, Shiro chuckles softly, humming out a few lines afterward, then picks up – “So, kiss me and smile for me. . .”

“It’s terrible!” Keith mutters, not the least bit irritated, while burying his head against Shiro’s shoulder. 

Because he loves it. . .he loves it. . .

Because it’s not perfect at all, but every bit of it is his, right down to the ache burning in the marrow of his bones. 

“Oh, babe, I hate to go,” Shiro murmurs against his temple. 

And there is something honest and broken in that line, in the way Shiro’s voice stumbles over the last few words. One simple faltering, full of truth, full of affection, full of loss.

“I hate you,” Keith mumbles, but the words barely register, as empty and meaningless as those balloons they always parade about at the Garrison’s grandest events. He lets the world go dark as his eyes shut and Shiro’s hand drifts from his back and settles on the crown of his head. Slow and careful, fingers start to thread through his hair, and all the while Shiro quietly hums the song that is all but breaking Keith's heart.

Every note stealing another piece. Every touch from Shiro finding it again. 

And in the midst of it all, Keith knows the tears are pushing out from around his lashes, knows that he’s spilling them across his cheek, over the bridge of his nose, right onto Shiro’s skin. He won’t let himself sob though, keeping the sound locked up within his throat until it burns solar-scalding. Refuses to give voice to the fears that have always had a home within him. 

The same ones that nightmares find their foundation in. The ones he can’t let win, not in this. 

Shiro’s fingers continue to card through his hair, and when he sings next, his voice is muffled against Keith’s temple, quiet and wanting, thick with promise.

“When I come back, I’ll wear your wedding ring. . .”

Something shatters in Keith’s chest, shards dropping right down into the depths of all that he is and landing with sharp ceramic clicks, a world littered with slivers of emotion set to cut on the clean-up. The breath seizes in his lungs, his eyes burn, and there’s salt on his lips, bitter and warm, and everything is so wonderfully wrong, so terribly right in this moment. 

“You’re coming back. . .”

His fingers clamp down over Shiro’s, and he drags their hands over to his chest, to where his heart is frantically fluttering with thoughts of a life still left for him. 

“There’s no hell deep or dark enough to keep me from returning to you. . .”

Keith hiccups a laugh. “No one signs up to walk into hell.”

“Well, maybe it’s not that bad. . . “ Shiro murmurs, his voice threadbare, though there’s something impossibly cozy about its worn edges that has the warmth flourishing in Keith’s core. Because he loves that Shiro can be human for him. “I just won’t have you, and that’s hell enough for me.”

A nod of his head as lips press against Shiro’s knuckles.

“Make sure you come home, Takashi.”

“Yes, sir.”


End file.
